Russia said Friday it was likely to bring forward the flight of a new
manned space mission to the International Space Station but postpone the launch
of a cargo ship after a rocket failure that forced two crew members to make an
emergency landing.

It was the first such incident in Russia’s
post-Soviet history — an unprecedented setback for the country’s space
industry.

Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and US
astronaut Nick Hague sped back to Earth when the Soyuz rocket failed shortly
after launching from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday.

The Soviet-designed Soyuz rocket is currently the
world’s only lifeline to the International Space Station and the accident will
affect the work of the orbiting laboratory.

The next Soyuz launch had been
scheduled to take a new three-person crew to the ISS on December 20 and a
Progress cargo ship had been set to blast off on October 31.